Thursday, November 15, 2007

Miss Information is annoyed by toddlers

Miss Information has always felt animosity towards the under 5 set. The ones she’s related to or knows personally aren’t so bad. Miss Information gets a lot of enjoyment out of warping their tiny minds. Besides, you can be really sarcastic to them with impunity.

Up until recently it’s been one-sided and Miss Information has been winning. Suddenly, though, the toddlers have begun to fight back. The first incident occurred when Miss Information was minding her own business in a coffee shop. She had snagged one of the few comfy chairs and was planning to hang around for awhile. Then he showed up.

He toddled up to Miss Information’s chair. She didn’t want to seem like a total bitch (yet) so she said hello. The child didn’t respond verbally. He did respond, though. He began punching her. Repeatedly. Was it something she said? The child’s father was far from shocked. Instead of signing the kid up for military school, he walked away ignoring the fact that his child was pummelling a total stranger, and went over to the coffee counter, which was all the way across the room, behind a wall.

Since it was a busy downtown coffee place, Miss Information concluded that the guy didn’t really care if his child had its ass kicked by a total stranger. Sadly, her taser is in for repairs. Also—too many witnesses. She packed up her stuff and left without sustaining much damage. Thank goodness she learned that bob and weave manoeuvre in kickboxing class.

Later that week, a couple of women with a whole daycare centre’s worth of demon spawn came into the library. Even their mothers recognized they were evil. One of them was tied up--but unfortunately not handcuffed. He broke loose of his chains (well, a scarf) and began pulling Miss Information’s hair. Nobody touches Miss Information’s hair. Sometimes not even her. Hair care is so time consuming. His mother thought it was adorable. Miss Information was not as amused.

7 Comments:

Poiint One: Parenting has gone down the tubes.Point Two: I thought you were going to say the mother wanted you to babysit the kid while she went to read a book like War and Peace. I really hate that...

Miss Print commiserates. Miss Print is outraged on Miss Information's behalf. Miss Print is also a mother, and well remembers unruly toddler days. One cannot always predict how toddlers are going to behave. (Or perhaps one can: they are rather like computers, which can decide to shut down/trash your files/refuse to start up/etc. with nary a thought to how they're messing up your day.) But she digresses.

When Miss Print's children were small and behaved badly in public, she rounded them up and took them home. Miss Print occasionally had to cut short lunches and shopping trips, but that's the price of parenthood. Miss Print is not a perfect mother and you won't see a nimbus over the heads of her children, but she has tried hard to instil in them some sense of propriety.

Miss Print is cautiously optimistic. When she took daughter #2 and a school friend to a local library to do research for a school project, they turned off their cell phones, listened to the nice woman who showed them how to use the card catalogue, said please and thank you, availed themselves of the services of the reference librarian when they couldn't find some materials on their own, and used their indoor library voices.

Miss Print would, however, caution against tripping annoying little b*ggers. Their bad behaviour is not their fault. Throw a banana peel at the feet of the parent(s) instead.

may all parents read such postings and remember that not everyone thinks their little wonder is so delightful...As mother of a current toddler, I'm with Miss Print on all counts... particularly the banana peel